Kathryn Stott - Solitaires: Piano Works by Maurice Ravel, Olivier Messiaen, Jehan Alain, Henri Dutilleux (2015)

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Kathryn Stott - Solitaires: Piano Works by Maurice Ravel, Olivier Messiaen, Jehan Alain, Henri Dutilleux (2015)

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A solitaire in French is a single mounted jewel, a concept that seems less than apt for the rather hefty works recorded here by British pianist Kathryn Stott. But this fine recital holds together in another way: Ravel, who so often provides the temporal endpoint for traditional piano recitals, is here, to a greater or lesser extent, the launching point for the other three composers featured. Stott's reading of the neoclassical Le Tombeau de Couperin is beautifully precise and balanced, catching the economy of this Baroque-style suite to the hilt. That economy carries over into the later works, even the rarely performed Piano Sonata of Henri Dutilleux, a work that deftly fuses Ravel's sense of classical forms with a largely dissonant language. The opening Prelude and Fugue of Jehan Alain, actually two separate works that are reasonably enough combined here, is another seldom-played piece that makes an arresting curtain-raiser, and the final "Le baiser de l'Enfant Jésus" of Messiaen, part of the giant Vingt regards sur l'Enfant Jésus, is the splendid climax of the whole, its spiritual, dreamlike ascent at the end superbly controlled. Better still is the sound, recorded at Hallé St. Peters in Manchester: it creates a hypnotic effect all its own.

Review by James Manheim, Allmusic.com

There is much to enjoy in this enterprising programme. Jéhan Alain’s Prélude et Fugue, written at 24, is testimony to what French music lost with his death only five years later. The harmonies of the Prélude are beautifully controlled and the Fugue reconciles the form with a remarkably progressive language – less than 90 seconds long, but full of character. The other three, better known works on the disc give us an interesting conspectus of French piano music between 1914 and 1948.

In Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin, Kathryn Stott not only pays tribute to the Classical impulses behind the work but also honours its more powerful moments: in the ‘Menuet’ the climax, as played here, reminds us that all the movements are dedicated to friends the composer lost in the First World War. I do think though that, at the end, the trill has to be cleared, as in the orchestral version.

Stott’s fingers are well up to the virtuosic demands of the ‘Prélude’ and ‘Toccata’, as they are to those of the works by Dutilleux and Messiaen. She is particularly attentive to dynamics and chording, and her phrasing throughout is never less than convincing. My only slight reservation in a couple of places concerns tempos: the opening of the Dutilleux Sonata is a touch careful compared with the recording by the composer’s wife for whom the piece was written, and likewise in the excerpt from Vingt Regards, ‘Le baiser de L’Enfant-Jésus’, Stott at times crosses the very fine line between rapture and solidity. The recording quality is superb.

Review by Roger Nichols, BBC Music Magazine

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Kathryn Stott - Solitaires: Piano Works by Maurice Ravel, Olivier Messiaen, Jehan Alain, Henri Dutilleux (2015)

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Kathryn Stott - Solitaires: Piano Works by Maurice Ravel, Olivier Messiaen, Jehan Alain, Henri Dutilleux (2015)

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